Saviour
by Clara Barton
Summary: "Hey, babe, can you come here for a minute?" Duo only says that when he needs help, the kind of help that involves guns and knives and lots of dead bodies and when Trowa heard him say that he knew it was bad.


A/N: Quick little thing before I chain myself to my desk and work on lectures.

Warnings: Language, violence, angst, fluff?

Pairings: 2x3

Saviour

"Hey, babe, can you come here for a minute?"

It was the rare afternoon when they were both at home, neither off on assignment or at Preventers headquarters working or training, and Trowa had been reading in the living room while Duo played video games in the office on some relic of a machine he had found in a junk shop and miraculously brought back to life.

Trowa frowned.

Duo's tone was so uncharacteristically neutral, so calm and without inflection that he knew something was wrong. Would have known, even if Duo hadn't asked exactly that same question two years ago on their undercover op on M50S when they'd been in a warehouse inspecting illegal firearms and Duo had gone into a back room, had called out the question and Trowa had known something was wrong and sure enough, as he stepped into the room Duo was at gunpoint, three guys ready to kill him and it had been quick, dirty work to take them down and get out unscathed.

Babe, their code word for 'I need help right fucking now', was something they had thrown around for years, ever since that party when Wufei had drunkenly tried to proposition Duo and he and Trowa hadn't been together yet, hadn't even admitted that the one time they had fucked after the mission when they both almost died meant more than a quick, life-affirming moment of release, but Duo had turned to him with wide eyes and said 'Hey, babe, didn't you want to show me the view?' and Trowa had rescued him, had taken him out to the balcony and then to the bathroom, locked the door and fucked him and maybe that once babe hadn't been critical, hadn't been the same kind of 'send in the cavalry' that it had become by now, but Trowa knew what it meant all the same.

It meant someone had broken into their apartment in New York and that Duo and his lives were in danger and he had no fucking clue how someone had broken in - they must have used the fire escape on the ancient apartment and it was yet another reason Trowa hadn't wanted to live here, even if Duo _liked_ the fact that there was an alternate escape route and maybe they should have listened to Captain Paranoia Yuy and installed a security system but now wasn't the time for that.

"Coming, babe," Trowa shouted. He set down his book, but instead of heading straight for the office he went into the kitchen, grabbed the lockbox in the pantry and opened it.

As he put the spare magazine into the pistol he considered just how bad the threat could be.

He was silent, hugging corners and walls and he led his way into the office with the pistol, swept all corners of the room but it was empty.

Empty except for Duo sitting on the couch, feet drawn up under him, game controller dropped on the floor and an expression of terror on his face.

Trowa had seen that expression before, when he'd fucked up and taken a bullet to the liver that would have killed him if they hadn't gotten lucky and Duo had looked just as terrified then, his hands red with Trowa's blood as he applied pressure to the wound and threatened to murder Trowa if he died on him.

"Where?" Trowa asked softly, scanning the room, wondering where the fuck the threat was and why the fuck Duo was just sitting there, paralyzed with fear.

Duo pointed and Trowa frowned, following his finger.

The coffee table?  
>Was there some kind of explosive? Something pressure sensitive perhaps?<p>

Trowa slowly crouched down, but the underside was clean.

"No," Duo hissed through gritted teeth, "on top."

Trowa looked again. There was nothing there. No threat. No -

A spider. A brown spider not much bigger than Trowa's thumbnail.

He arched an eyebrow.

"The spider?"

Duo nodded slowly, eyes still wide with horror.

"You're shitting me."

Duo's eyes moved from the spider to Trowa.

"It's a fucking monster, Tro!" Duo said.

"It's a fucking _spider,_ Duo."

"It's an unholy insect of death and I need you to kill it."

Trowa glared at him. He held the gun in his right hand and steadied himself while removing his right shoe and, glaring at Duo the entire time, he used it to squash the bug.

Duo heaved a sigh of relief and leaned back on the couch.

"I've seen you kill five men with nothing but razor wire and you made me come in here to kill a spider?"

It was Duo's turn to glare.

"I grew up smaller and weaker than everyone else - killing people with razor wire is easy," Duo snapped. "But that -" he pointed at the spider, "is not something anyone should ever have to fucking deal with. _That_ is the reason people left this godforsaken rock for space in the first place. You know what we don't have in space? Fucking spiders, Trowa. Fucking spiders stay on this shit hole while humans stay in space, as far the fuck away from spiders as we can get."

Trowa felt his lips twitch.

"Ok, Duo."

Duo's eyes narrowed.

"Don't you dare 'ok, Duo' me, Barton."

Trowa rolled his eyes.

"Does the God of Death need me to act as a sentry in case the army of monsters invades or can I go back to my book?"

"Remember that sex you planned on _ever_ having with me again?" Duo asked.

Trowa smirked.

"Yeah, actually. I was just thinking about having some right now. Isn't that how damsels in distress award their saviours?"

"I will fucking end you, Barton," Duo said and jumped up from the couch.


End file.
